this in the hands of a dealer and I enticed him to part with it. You, more than anyone, will appreciate it. It is the B Text, of course. As you always taught – B holds the key. 11 September is surely a sign, don’t you think? I hope you will be with us when M’s day finally comes. K. October 2001.
Beneath the date was a small hand-drawn symbol.
This sight of it made Elisabetta’s head swim.
There was something strangely familiar about it, real and unreal at the same time, as if she’d seen it before in a long-forgotten dream.
She tried to shrug off the feeling as she opened the envelope. Inside was a slim bound book. Its cover was plain , worn leather, ever so slightly warped. The pages were a bit foxed. It was an old book in fairly good condition.
When she opened the cover her head cleared as effectively as if she’d taken a strong whiff of smelling salts.
Elisabetta didn’t think she’d ever seen the engraving before, but part of it was as recognizable as her own reflection in the mirror.
It was a 1620 edition of Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus , and there on the frontispiece was the old conjuror wearing his academic robes, standing inside his magic circle with his staff and his book, summoning the devil through the floor. The devil was a winged creature with horns, a pointy beard and a long curled tail.
None of that made Elisabetta’s heart race or her skin crawl. None of it made her feel like she was suffocating under her tight veil and gown.
The source of her alarm lay around and within the rim of the magic circle.
Constellation signs .
Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer.
Star signs .
The moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, presented in the same peculiar order as on the fresco at St Callixtus.
And peeking out to the right of Faustus’s robes was Pisces, tilted upright, looking for all the world like a man with a tail.
EIGHT
Rome, AD 37
DUSK WAS TURNING to night as two weary boys trudged up the road toward the city centre. An insipid quarter-moon hung limply in the black sky, dimly lighting the way. In silence they kept close to the stinking central gutter to avoid worse piles of refuse that littered their way.
‘Where will we sleep?’ the youngest asked fearfully as they passed a gloomy alley.
‘I’ve no idea,’ snapped his older brother. Sensing the seven-year-old’s abject misery he relented. ‘The father of my friend, Lucius, says he sleeps in the cattle market whenever he stays in Rome. We’ll find a place there.’
Clasping his brother’s hand, the younger child shivered. His loose tunic barely warded off the chill.
‘Are we nearly there? At the cattle market?’ he enquired hopefully.
Quintus groaned, having heard a variant of the same question at least a hundred times that day.
‘Yes, Sextus, soon we’ll have somewhere warm to rest, after we’ve had a bite to eat.’
They were travelling to their uncle’s brick manufactory in the north of Rome, on the Pincian Hill, and they were hungry and exhausted following a dawn departure from their village. At least they’d made it through the walls, into the city. The two huge Praetorians with scorpion emblems affixed to their breastplates at the Porta Capena had given them a world of trouble and tried to shake them down for a bribe. But they had no coins, nothing at all and they had to prove it by stripping themselves bare and enduring the taunts of the fearsome soldiers.
Quintus, the older by three years, had wondered if his father had looked like these men. Only the vaguest of memories lingered. He was a toddler when the centurion left for active service in Germania. Their mother had to fend for herself with only the help of two older girls to tend their smallholding and look after Quintus and his baby brother.
Only a fortnight ago, their mother had gotten notice of her husband’s death in battle against the Cheruscii. On further learning that the bastard had
Beneath the date was a small hand-drawn symbol.
This sight of it made Elisabetta’s head swim.
There was something strangely familiar about it, real and unreal at the same time, as if she’d seen it before in a long-forgotten dream.
She tried to shrug off the feeling as she opened the envelope. Inside was a slim bound book. Its cover was plain , worn leather, ever so slightly warped. The pages were a bit foxed. It was an old book in fairly good condition.
When she opened the cover her head cleared as effectively as if she’d taken a strong whiff of smelling salts.
Elisabetta didn’t think she’d ever seen the engraving before, but part of it was as recognizable as her own reflection in the mirror.
It was a 1620 edition of Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus , and there on the frontispiece was the old conjuror wearing his academic robes, standing inside his magic circle with his staff and his book, summoning the devil through the floor. The devil was a winged creature with horns, a pointy beard and a long curled tail.
None of that made Elisabetta’s heart race or her skin crawl. None of it made her feel like she was suffocating under her tight veil and gown.
The source of her alarm lay around and within the rim of the magic circle.
Constellation signs .
Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer.
Star signs .
The moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, presented in the same peculiar order as on the fresco at St Callixtus.
And peeking out to the right of Faustus’s robes was Pisces, tilted upright, looking for all the world like a man with a tail.
EIGHT
Rome, AD 37
DUSK WAS TURNING to night as two weary boys trudged up the road toward the city centre. An insipid quarter-moon hung limply in the black sky, dimly lighting the way. In silence they kept close to the stinking central gutter to avoid worse piles of refuse that littered their way.
‘Where will we sleep?’ the youngest asked fearfully as they passed a gloomy alley.
‘I’ve no idea,’ snapped his older brother. Sensing the seven-year-old’s abject misery he relented. ‘The father of my friend, Lucius, says he sleeps in the cattle market whenever he stays in Rome. We’ll find a place there.’
Clasping his brother’s hand, the younger child shivered. His loose tunic barely warded off the chill.
‘Are we nearly there? At the cattle market?’ he enquired hopefully.
Quintus groaned, having heard a variant of the same question at least a hundred times that day.
‘Yes, Sextus, soon we’ll have somewhere warm to rest, after we’ve had a bite to eat.’
They were travelling to their uncle’s brick manufactory in the north of Rome, on the Pincian Hill, and they were hungry and exhausted following a dawn departure from their village. At least they’d made it through the walls, into the city. The two huge Praetorians with scorpion emblems affixed to their breastplates at the Porta Capena had given them a world of trouble and tried to shake them down for a bribe. But they had no coins, nothing at all and they had to prove it by stripping themselves bare and enduring the taunts of the fearsome soldiers.
Quintus, the older by three years, had wondered if his father had looked like these men. Only the vaguest of memories lingered. He was a toddler when the centurion left for active service in Germania. Their mother had to fend for herself with only the help of two older girls to tend their smallholding and look after Quintus and his baby brother.
Only a fortnight ago, their mother had gotten notice of her husband’s death in battle against the Cheruscii. On further learning that the bastard had
Similar Books
